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Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Portrait de la jeune fille en feu
2019 · Film · 121 min
Directed by Céline Sciamma
On an isolated island in Brittany at the end of the eighteenth century, a female painter is obliged to paint a wedding portrait of a young woman.
7 positive1 neutralfrom 8 commenters
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9 comments on Hacker News
Movies with stories about building chemistry and relationships just need fewer characters. They still exist:
- All of Us Strangers (2023)
- Aftersun (2022)
- The Lighthouse (2019)
- Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Portrait de la jeune fille en feu) (2019)
- The Duke of Burgundy (2014)
Should put that to my watchlist. The trio of Tomboy, Girlhood, and Portrait of a Lady on Fire are some of my all time favorite movies.
I dunno, 2015, I'm a little weak on this year: It Follows, Creed, Ex Machina, Max Max: Fury Road, Sicario, The Hateful 8. I'd watch those again with someone any time, and recommend all of them often. Several on my to-watch list most of which I expect to be good, like Queen of the Desert, While We're Young, Slow West, and The Overnight, just haven't made it to them yet. Not an exhaustive list, just gleaned from some titles I have at hand.
2016: Green Room, The Nice Guys, Hail Caesar!, The Neon Demon, Swiss Army Man, Hunt for the Wilder People, The VVitch, Train to Busan, Shin Godzilla, Moana (hey, I like this one), Arrival. Moonlight's on my to-watch and is supposed to be really good.
2017 (I've done OK on catching up with these!): The Lost City of Z, Dunkirk, Low Life, Good Time, Logan Lucky (absolutely slept on, kills it as a feel-good lightweight small-stakes heist movie), Blade Runner 2049, The Death of Stalin (I liked this less than a lot of folks, but given how widely-loved it was, I'm probably the idiot here), One Cut of the Dead, You Were Never Really Here. The Planet of the Apes movie from that year, plus Phantom Thread, and The Little Hours are to-watch for me and come highly recommended.
2018: Annihilation, Isle of Dogs, Upgrade, Sorry to Bother You, High Life, Eighth Grade, the Suspiria remake. To-watch that I expect to be good include Champion (Korean arm wrestling movie—there's another movie by the same name that year), First Reformed, BlacKkKLansman, The Favourite, The Wolf House, Climax, and some others.
2019: HUGE year for the particular (small) set I'm seeing on my list, including a ton to-watch but a bunch I've seen. Uncut Gems, The Lighthouse, Knives Out, Little Women, JoJo Rabbit, Ready or Not, Parasite, Midsommar, The Art of Self Defense, maybe Marriage Story (but if you've seen one Baumbach movie, you've kinda seen them all, and I'm not sure I'd put it above The Squid and the Whale). Midway's a well-above-average war movie and pairs great with Tora, Tora, Tora! as a crazy-long double feature in a really fun way. To-watch list is nuts and I really need to dedicate a month or so to filling out my watched-list for this year: First Cow, The Irishman, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Bacurau, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Farewell, The Souvenir, Blow the Man Down, The Vast of Night, Her Smell, Funan.
It basically just keeps going like that, year after year, and I've barely even tried to dredge up good movies for most of those years, the bulk of it's just stuff that's risen to my attention one way or another, and I'm terrible at keeping up with foreign film especially. I also left off some that a lot of folks would probably include, like at least one Mission Impossible (aside from MI2, I think these are all pretty good action movies, though quality varies a bit) and Avengers: Endgame which, opinion on the rest of Marvel aside (I think it's mostly kinda lazy crap? But was basically entertained for most of them regardless, so I guess I can't complain too much) was a hell of an event. Also Black Panther, which everyone loved but I was pretty meh on (I hate the entire end fight, and it's looooong)
To present an opposite viewpoint, I try to only engage with media I suspect future me will be able to revisit and pull enjoyment out of at least once. I rarely actually do so, but I've found it to be a remarkably effective quality filter.
It's also a genre independent quality metric. That's not to be underplayed. Some examples of films that successfully passed it for me: Casablanca; Portrait of a Lady on Fire; Hereditary; Under the Skin; My Neighbor Totoro; The Fifth Element. I'm pretty sure most people would agree at least half of these movies are good.
It turns out most of the things I consider worth revisiting at least once are also things other people would consider that way. So for me a Rewatchability rating is a positive signal.
This feels almost like a request made in bad faith. I don't exactly know what quintessence of inspiration is required too put together any given movie - but lets take Portrait de la jeune fille en feu[1]. It's regarded as a masterwork on relationships and as visually stunning, judgements I agree with. The skill in its craft is in drawing out how the technique of painting lingers on details of humans in the same way that humans linger on them. On how the emphasis of an element (a stroke, a gaze) can overcome its humble character in the context of the moment. The overall plot of the movie is unremarkable - the reason it is a masterpiece lies in the how the actors are able to draw each other out and how the team putting together the look of the movie is able to reflect their relationship in tone and vibe.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_a_Lady_on_Fire
It’s the rushed post process. You can go on r/colourists and ask. You might be able to find some old posts from people who worked on these things explaining it.
It’s 100% not the camera. Portrait of a Lady on Fire was shot on RED. You can do virtually anything with digital cameras these days. Steve Yedlin proved he could make digital look like film beyond anyone’s ability to distinguish them.
Netflix just rushes everything so it’s all a similar level of not good.
The RED cameras are perfectly capable of delivering great picture quality and good color science. The "Netflix look" doesn't come from cameras, but from the fact that everything in their cheaper productions is rushed, including the color grading.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire for instance, was shot on RED cameras at 8K. And it's one of the most beautiful digital films ever made, IMO.
If you watched the film "Happy Death Day" (if not the lesser sequel) and enjoyed its exploration of a kind-of goofy mashup (Ground Hog Day x Teen Slasher), the same director made a film built on, roughly, a similar concept, just called "Freaky". If you already suspect you might like it, don't read anything and just watch, though you may be able to guess the mash-up from the one-word title. It's fun, and well-made.
I'm struggling to think of much else that I've personally seen, from last year, that wasn't a little too indie or "genre" for me to recommend it to someone whose tastes I don't know—I didn't get much new watched, and mostly caught up on some reputedly-great stuff I'd missed from the prior five years or so (I keep up with a mix of pop junk food films, which I do like, and the "good" stuff, but usually don't have time to watch anywhere near all of either) aside from some fairly taste-specific newer material I watched.
Some other titles I'm seeing, from people I know and trust, for 2020, include: First Cow; The Old Guard; Portrait of a Lady on Fire (technically a 2019 film, but widely available in 2020); Wolfwalkers (animated); Spontaneous; Bacurau; Blow the Man Down. There are lots more, that's just a varied sampling.
My taste is less arthousey so I’m not the one to make the list of modern parallels for these movies. But since you asked, here is my personal list after looking at my Letterboxd (in no particular order) Parasite, Little Women, Into the Spiderverse, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Lady Bird, Phantom Thread, Knives Out, Annihilation, and Get Out. Almost all of those movies involve some type of unconventional approach or risk by the filmmakers. For example even something as basic as the adaption of a century and a half old book is handled in a new and innovative way unlike the countless earlier adaptations. Heck even the freaking Spider-Man movie was playing with the form in ways that no other movie has ever done before. The artistry, the evolution, and everything else is still there if you look for it.